Capability for person-to-person communication has been enhanced greatly through recent development in wireless telephony and Internet technology. Anyone with a suitable wireless digital personal appliance or Internet appliance such as a personal computer with a standard Internet connection may access and communicate with other such equipped persons for the purpose of pleasure, business, or shared activities. There has also been great acceptance of technology for person-to-person communication with the purpose of making initial contact in an anonymous manner so as to provide two parties with a method of determining a desire (or lack) to further communicate semi-anonymously until the two parties decide to, or not to, meet face-to-face.
One problem that is encountered by an individual practicing this manner of communication is a lack of being able to immediately communicate with potentially desirable parties, and in many cases a lack of specific information as to the locality of a person to whom they might wish to communicate. Many prior-art services currently provide communication paths, such as Internet or newsprint personal advertisements, for example. These services provide a capability to respond but that capability is dependent on some time lapse between the time of placing the advertisement and receipt of responses to the advertisements. In these methods there is a considerable time lapse between the receipt of the response and initiating a reply to the initial interest.
In addition to the above, the profile information in such prior-art services is often sketchy and location information may indicate only a city or general geographic location. Time response using Internet paths is dependent on the person placing the advertisement to access the responses to their advertisement and reply. This may be accomplished in a matter of minutes or days depending on personal interests and habits. Time response in newsprint scenarios will take days or weeks depending on the time of placing the advertisement, publication timeframes, and reader search and response.
Another issue placing limitations on prior-art applications of personal communication services is the process in which the replies to personal advertisements are made. In the Internet application described above, one needs a PC or sophisticated digital appliance to search the personals services and reply usually via Internet to an interesting party. In the newsprint application, a responder most often has to reply to a cited telephone number or in some cases, send a letter to designated address. A significant limitation of current and prior-art services is the lack of availability of immediate and specific location information of the two parties utilizing a personal communications service.
A short-range radio technology system, known to the inventors as Blue tooth™, provides a capability for communications among digital devices using local wireless/cellular networks and the Internet and provides simplified data synchronization between such Net devices and computers.
Bluetooth™ firmware installed on a wireless device continually broadcasts and searches within a defined radius for other devices having Bluetooth™ technology capability. When such devices are “in range” they may communicate with one other. It has occurred to the inventors that this technology may be exploited and modified to provide meeting services based on profiling. Any other form of immediate proximity enabled wireless technologies may also be used.
What is clearly needed is an Internet-enhanced networking system applicable to wireless technology that enables users to quickly locate interested parties based on priority profiling wherein profile matching and acceptance is a predecessor for communication and possibly meeting. Such a system greatly would greatly enhance any networking situation wherein it is desired to have knowledge of the participants before initiating non-anonymous communication.
Also in another aspect, the same sort of systems needed to meet the needs described above might be used to provide a proximity-based ad or coupon service, wherein wirelessly transmitting ad servers, in some cases a part of specific business locations, may advertise to, and provide discounts and coupons, for example, to persons having enabled digital communication devices, such as cellular telephones PDAs or other devices.